FROM MANCHESTER TO LONDON, SYDNEY, AND NEW YORK IN 18,250 (ish) DAYS…
Me, Manchester, 1970.
THE SHORT STORY
I write books about the people who fascinate me in worlds that amaze me. What is humanity’s future post AI? What happens when automation consumes the workforce? What will colonies look like on the Moon, Mars, and Europa? What if X happens?
I love crime, thrillers, and stories about people with secrets. If there’s not a big twist along the way, I’d never write the first word.
My own story has had its own share of curves and surprises. I’ve been writing about intelligent machines, spaceships and desperate heroes since my childhood, but that happened while I pursued a twenty-year career as an architect. After working and winning awards in London, Sydney, and New York, I left that profession behind to become a full-time author.
The international bestselling Alice Yu series takes place forty years from now, in a world transformed by mechanical intelligences—AI’s big brother. Yu is a loner cop atoning for past sins. Through the series she discovers what it is to be human, while becoming something much more in the process. If you like the steely future noir of William Gibson, James S. A. Corey, and Martha Wells, you’ll love these sci-fi thrillers.
Want to know more?
Patrick Keen (my dad) arriving at Udon Airfield, North East Thailand from RAF Tengah, Singapore. 22nd May, 1964.
THE LONG STORY
I grew up in Manchester, where my father was a fighter pilot for the RAF. When not flying aircraft he spent his free time in a leaky garage rebuilding old cars. As a little boy I’d sneak into that garage when he was out, wander through the broken and twisted metal forms, smell the oil and antifreeze. Time passed, and I didn’t think about that frigid space, or its inhabitants, for years.
Or so I thought.
I left Manchester at eighteen to study architecture at Portsmouth and Kingston Universities, then moved to Sydney, Australia. After an eventful twelve months (some of which I can almost remember) I spent a year in India and Nepal, before moving to New York. I loved it, but when my visa expired I returned to the UK.
Headed up to Annapurna Base camp, Nepal, 1995. I’m the ugly one to the right.
Back in London, I took a fantastic job at Grimshaw Architects designing spaceship-looking buildings. They won awards and went over budget in equal measure. It was during this time I started to write in earnest, and after a few false starts completed my first novel, U.K.Ultra. The story was an alternate history of the UK, where the British government used drugs to pacify and control the population.
It was rubbish.
However, I enjoyed writing it so much I left Grimshaw to work part time at KPF architects. There I wrote my second book, Honeysuckle, about an alcoholic priest with a bad gambling habit.
Better, it got some agent attention, but no prizes.
By this point I’d been in London for ten years and was itchy to travel again. New York had been so much fun I moved back, taking nothing with me but two badly written books and some pants. During the days I designed towers for KPF, in the evenings I wrote a new new sci-fi novel, Mechanical. This one worked, and I finished runner-up in an international writing competition. Close, but no cigar. Yeah, it still burns.
Evolo Skyscraper Competition Entry 2015: “Life Tree.”
Nanoscopic seeds are planted in desolate areas; they grow into machine ‘trees’ that grow new cities. I’m always thinking about Sci-Fi, even when not.
Life moves on. I got married and had two kids, moved to Gensler Architects for a more family-oriented lifestyle, and won more awards. However, it turns out there’s no such thing as a family lifestyle in architecture and I got fired for pointing that out.
I was the design director of the 2015 AIA award winning Dwight-Engelwood STEM center, New Jersey, USA . . .
. . . and then led the design team competing for the UBER HQ building in San Francisco . . .
. . . which we won, and then I was fired for not filling out an HR form out correctly. This is a true story.
After all of that it seemed time to work for myself, so I started a company producing hand-drawn illustrations. During my architectural career I’d seen computer renderings become so overused they lost any impact they once had. I’d had success in my own presentations using sketched perspectives, so decided to do it professionally. It went far better than expected, and within a year I was featured by Apple. It seems our AI overlords were monitoring me.
At home, with time on my hands, I had an idea for a new book. A woman walks along a beach and steps on something. She pauses… then disintegrates. That kernel started me working on This Automatic Eden. Whilst writing that I realized the twisted and broken Brooklyn I had created was my father’s garage on a dreamlike scale, humans nothing more than tiny, inconsequential beings surrounded by unknowable and terrifying machinery. You can’t escape your upbringing, no matter how hard you try.
So that’s why I write about New York in the 2050s.
That’s why automation and murder.
That’s why sentient, pathological machines.
I hope you like the Cortex series, its inhabitants and settings. I love hearing from readers, so drop me an email anytime at JIM@JIMKEEN.COM and lets chat 😀